XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   Steve Hayes  spoke these staves:   
   >   
   > On Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:13:59 -0700 (PDT), R Davidovich   
   >  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> The Ainulindale, the Tolkien creation myth, is JRRT's halfway   
   >> point between the pagan mythos he was emulating for Ancient   
   >> England and the Hebrew/Christian Monotheistic system he accepted   
   >> as the ideal.   
      
   I would put that even stronger -- Tolkien accepted it as fact.   
      
   However, one should not forget his complaint that the Arthurian world   
   was, for his purposes, flawed because it explicitly contained the   
   Christian faith:   
      
       Also -- and here I hope I shall not sound absurd -- I was   
       from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved   
       country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its   
       tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and   
       found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There   
       was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian,   
       and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing   
       English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there   
       was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is,   
       it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of   
       Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I   
       felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too   
       lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For   
       another and more important thing: it is involved in, and   
       explicitly contains the Christian religion.   
         For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me   
       fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and   
       contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth   
       (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the   
       primary ‘real’ world. (I am speaking, of course, of our   
       present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian   
       days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my   
       essay, which you read.)   
   Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds.), _The Letters of J.   
   R. R. Tolkien_ (Kindle Locations 3052-3061).   
   Letter no. 151 to Milton Waldman Late? 1951   
      
   Incidentally this is one of the things that I find is extremely   
   interesting in connection with _The Fall of Arthur_, where Tolkien   
   does include the Christian religion.   
      
   To avoid going into a long discussin of what precisely the quality   
   was that Tolkien was seeking, let us just conclude that he wanted   
   something that specifically did _not_ include the Christian religion   
   explicitly, but he appears to also have wanted something that was   
   nonetheless in accord with Christian beliefs. In the _Ainulindalë_ he   
   created a cosmogonic myth that was essentially Christian in all but   
   the names employed.   
      
   >> On the other hand, JRRT's system has the elements of a future   
   >> strong monotheism, in that Eru is the one who emanated or created   
   >> the Ainur, awareness.   
   >   
   > The Ainulindalë makes explicit the Christian worldview on which   
   > Tolkien's work is implicitly based.   
      
   There is an essay pertaining to this by John William Houghton in Jane   
   Chance's _Tolkien the Medievalist_ that I found very interesting.   
   Houghton sums up his proposition nicely in this passage:   
      
         The modern reader, finding the Ainulindalë very different   
       from Genesis, might reasonably expect that if Eriol/Ælfwine   
       had passed the Elvish story on to medieval thinkers, they   
       would have found it equally strange, if not completely   
       irreconcilable with their Christian faith. In fact, however,   
       the commentary tradition -- and particularly the work of   
       Saint Augustine of Hippo – allows Tolkien's myth to consort   
       with Genesis at least as easily as the Timaeus does. [....].   
       Had medieval theologians encountered the Ainulindalë, they   
       would have found its picture of a double creation --   
       creation as music in the song of the Ainur and then as fact   
       in the word of Ilúvatar – reassuringly easy to fit into the   
       schema of Augustine’s Christian-Neoplatonist synthesis.   
   John William Houghton, 'Augustine in the cottage of lost play: The   
   _Ainulindalë_ as asterisk cosmogony' in _Tolkien the Medievalist_ by   
   Jane Chance (ed.)   
      
   And if we exchanged Eru and Ilúvatar with their English equivalents,   
   the One and All-father, the point would probably be even stronger   
   (not to mention if we then interpret Eru, the One, as simply God).   
      
   The set-up _within Arda_ with the Valar in charge of various spheres   
   of existence on Arda is very much reminescent of pagan pantheons, but   
   I agree that the _Ainulindalë_ creates a very Christian   
   superstructure on this pagan set-up.   
      
   > Nowadays people often seem to overlook the fact that there is not   
   > just one account of creation in the Bible, there are several.   
      
   Good point.   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
       Men, said the Devil,   
       are good to their brothers:   
       they don't want to mend   
       their own ways, but each other's.   
    - Piet Hein, /Mankind/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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